Visions of Camel Trophy
Adventure, peril, exploration, struggle, survival, odyssey... these words conjure up images from my childhood.
Images I first saw while flipping the pages of various magazines throughout the 80s. Mythical, yellow, 4WD vehicles always deep in the middle of some far away jungle. Each one, caught frozen on a magazine page in a moment of action. Be it a hazardous water-crossing, being winched out of a deep ravine, teetering over a makeshift bridge or floating across a river on a native built raft. These scenes all come from the terriffic jungle treks of various contestants competing in the Camel Trophy of the 1980s and 90s.
Range Rovers were the vehicles of choice. But while researching some information on the Internet I stumbled across some Camel Trophy info I did not know. The vehicles used in the very first Camel Trophy ( Transamazonica 1980 )were not Range Rovers. The three vehicles were Jeep CJ5s. Actually they were not Jeeps from Toldeo, Ohio. They were Ford U-50's which are Brazilian Jeeps built under licsence by Ford of Brazil.
Several sources on the Internet refer to them as CJ6s
but as far as I can tell from pictures they were Brazilian CJ5s. Here
are some of the pictures I have been able to scrounge up.
I am not going to build my CJ6 into a exact replica but use the Camel Trophy as an inspiration. A Jeep that is built for adventure and endurance.
More on this line of thought in my next post.
Tell me what you think in the comments section.
See ya, Tim D
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